Sunday, February 27, 2011

Flower Fairies

The snowdrops popping up reminded me that, after our garden composition stories and before diving into Botany per se, we should make flower fairies! We can read the poetry of Cicely Mary Barkerand take nature walks to discover the flowers on the school grounds that are currently in bloom. Cicely Mary Barker was such an amazing naturalist, and the personality of each flower clearly shows in both the words of her poems and the illustrations.

For this Language/Science/Handwork project I'd like the children to choose a flower, write a poem, and sew a corresponding flower fairy which we can display in the classroom. They can then take it for their nature table at home. Hmmm... another nice introduction to this project might be a root-child story (I have a lovely set I needle felted at a workshop with Suzanne Down) and The Story of the Root-Childrenby Sibylle von Olfers.

I've pulled all the festival and handwork books off my shelf that I thought might have flower fairy patterns and projects in them. Now I have to choose:

I will list all the different patterns included in this book -- there are many! -- but only the simplest would be appropriate for my young students to make. They can knit but cannot purl yet (although the knitted moss stitch flower fairy is lovely, and might be a reason to teach purling), they cannot crochet, and they are too little to make a fully formed Waldorf head.

If you yourself are making flower children for your Nature table, this book has the most variety of patterns and instructions.

This book contains patterns for a crocheted root child and a sewn root child which requires a Waldorf style doll head. For flower fairies, the books contains directions for a simple "Flower-Child made of teased sheep's wool" which we could easily do, a knitted flower child which requires moss stitch, a crocheted flower child, and a sewn flower child with a flower in her hand.

This book contains Flower Children patterns. The flower children are sewn simply of felt (a felt tube stuffed with wool, a simple head, collar and hat details added). The patterns included are crocus, snowdrop, bluebell, tulip, daffodil.

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